Hopping back on the forum after a LONG hiatus, glad to see some familiar names.

I just want to caution that, in many cases, younger designers & visualizers aren't pushing for a "good-enough" super-fast workflow because they're spoiled kids with no attention span; it's also largely due to the pressure of the current working environment.

Many of these same wise old folks who "learned things the right way" are managers and directors now, and are pushing the youngsters to have 25 renderings finished by yesterday (at a pay rate that hasn't kept up with inflation in 10 years ). So, damn right a 24 year old freelancer would rather take to YouTube than scour the documentation!

pushing the youngsters to have 25 renderings finished by yesterday (at a pay rate that hasn't kept up with inflation in 10 years

Yet the same youngsters demand that online services, music, films and good reads must be free or nearly so. Such is the way of the world. A race to the bottom, while wealth accumulates with wealth. However, there is no entitlement to the profitability of anyone's business, and there is no governmental or institutional hourly rate setting body. Rendering, like design and many other creative endeavours, has since the mid 80s become a sink or swim affair.

I would like to see Maxwell get popular with hobbyists. They are the ones generating YouTube content and tutorials and can be a great driver for increasing awareness. On the other hand, most things on YouTube tend to be 'quick' – and I hate that. Let the next 20 years be about quality...

Anyway:

1. A hobbyist plugin for less than $200 that is resolution limited to maybe 2K and a format that render farms can't accept. All other features identical.
2. A curated material library with the most important materials ready to download. And I mean production ready, top quality materials including the needed textures. Not just 'demo' materials, but something that can be studied for reference, made my experts.

Great ideas!!
Totally agree that mainly hobbyists / independent freelancers are the ones who will have more time and passion create more content on youtube. And generally bring awareness.

And hands down - for a production ready materials. Current material library is good to start but it feels like it is not really consistent. I think generally curated content (doesn't have to be only materials, could be also light set ups, or LUTs, or, scene optimisation techniques, scripts, etc) for Maxwell is very good idea.

2. A curated material library with the most important materials ready to download. And I mean production ready, top quality materials including the needed textures. Not just 'demo' materials, but something that can be studied for reference, made my experts.

Hasn't happened in 10 years, even though several larger studios would even have paid for it. The material library is not ready to use. For almost any other renderer, you can buy top quality material packs that any industrial designer can just plonk in and be done with it. I guess the Maxwell user base is so small that nobody ever bothered to offer materials commercially, apart from Arroway.

I'd like to see a Maxwell plugin for DataCAD (architectural software) which has around 250,000 seats worldwide and was voted best architectural software for user satisfaction in the G2Crowd annual survey comparison. Right now we have to use 3DS or DXF to export and import to Studio. It works, but a direct link would be better and it expands Maxwell's user base to include another software.

Improving MR's animation options would be helpful. The current rotation/spin is okay but adding a simple spline path would allow more options for presentation and keep up with the way the market now wants realism in both renders and animation/VR.....